(Part 2 of 2)

One of the main reasons for the government’s inability give back forgotten cash to residents, they claim, is the fact that they can not be tracked down. Problem is, would would ever think that people like ZsaZsa Gabor, Angelina Jolie, Victoria Beckham, Gerri Halliwell, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Lopez, Adam Sandler and Marlon Brando would be difficult to track down? Those names and the names of several other celebrities are just a few of the names in the California missing money database and yet they have never been contacted by the employees in the California Unclaimed Property Division. They are all owed checks for unclaimed money by California ranging in amount from hundreds to the thousands as in the case of Angelina Jolie. This just proves California state employees’ interest in holding this cash in the general fund for them to balance the budget deficit for as long as they possibly can. As a matter of fact, there was a recent ruling by a federal judge on CA abandoned cash, stating that the state wasn’t doing enough to locate the rightful owners and has temporarily halted the state’s s ability to take and hold it until a better policy of reuniting it with the rightful owners was adopted.

The total amount of unclaimed money in California averages five billion dollars annually – imagine the amount of interest that accrues for the state! Bill Palmer, an attorney in Sacramento who has fought in a number of cases involving CA unclaimed money, has said that the state’s program was intended to be a lost and found for California residents. Instead, it was turned into a profit generating ‘business’ in recent years.

The ban on the taking of property by California has since been lifted and the new California State Controller, John Chiang, is making extra efforts in the form of widespread changes in improving how his office handles California missing money. There is still a dire need though for Californians and residents of all other states across the U.S. to be informed about the presence of these properties and on how to perform a thorough search for them and take back what belongs to them.

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